Earth-Moon:
A Ted Hughes Website

Foxgloves above Mytholmroyd. Mytholmroyd is the small town in Yorkshire, where Ted Hughes was born in 1930.

About these Pages

The first version of this web site was created in May 1995. At the time there existed no web site whatsoever that would provide on-line information on Ted Hughes. Since then, the site has grown, changed in look and feel, and hopefully it will continue to do so. I have tried to keep layout and navigation as simple as possible while trying to offer an optimum of content.

The site is intended as a meeting place for readers, ›scholars‹, students, enthusiasts and anyone else with an interest in Ted Hughes's work. And indeed it seems to have become just this. But this site would definitely be a lot poorer without the help of the many people who contributed.

The title? - alludes to a poem by Ted Hughes which gave its name to a limited edition of poems published in 1976. Having its roots in the context of Crow, it was published as a children's poem. It was republished in Moon-Whales and Other Moon Poems (1976), and Moon-Whales (1988). » Earth-Moon« is one of those fascinating pieces which easily straddle both worlds — writing for adults and writing for children, which are often unnecessarily keep apart.
Then, one day I discovered the moon image above in a contract about a lease of land and property dating from 1794. In two places, the land-owner or solicitor had marked what he was saying with little moons, which struck me as beautifully childlike, especially considering the sober matter of the document.